bug#5564: 23.1.92; blink-cursor-mode

bug#5564: 23.1.92; blink-cursor-mode

[Leo]

I wonder if blink-cursor-mode has been set to t by default. I can't find
it in NEWS. Blinking cursor is an annoying distraction and most
applications don't use it unless the cursor is thin. The terminals
(xterm, rxvt etc.) don't use it by default either. But the default
cursor in Emacs is already huge.


In GNU Emacs 23.1.92.2 (x86_64-apple-darwin10.2.0, Carbon Version 1.6.0 AppKit 1038.25)
 of 2010-02-03 on Victoria.local
Windowing system distributor `Apple Inc.', version 10.6.2
configured using `configure  '--prefix=/usr/local/unix/emacs' '--with-mac''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: nil
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1-unix
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

bug#5564: 23.1.92; blink-cursor-mode

[Stefan Monnier]

> I wonder if blink-cursor-mode has been set to t by default.

Yes.

> I can't find it in NEWS.

That's because it's been that way since Emacs-21 when blink-cursor-mode
was introduced.


        Stefan

bug#5564: 23.1.92; blink-cursor-mode

[Leo]

On 2010-02-12 03:07 +0000, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> I wonder if blink-cursor-mode has been set to t by default.
>
> Yes.
>
>> I can't find it in NEWS.
>
> That's because it's been that way since Emacs-21 when blink-cursor-mode
> was introduced.
>
>
>         Stefan

OK, I am surprised to only see it now. In my previous Emacs that I
compiled from source, I can't seem to remember it has blinking cursor.

However would you agree with the following principle? If the cursor type
is a thin vertical line, it should blink; if it is a huge block, it is
redundant (annoying) to blink. I checked a few applications such as
firefox, gedit, kate and openoffice3 and this seems to be the case
although I noted that gvim has blinking block cursor with higher
blinking frequency than emacs.

So how about turn the blinking off for Emacs 23.2?

Best wishes,
Leo

bug#5564: 23.1.92; blink-cursor-mode

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 09:18, Leo <sdl.web@gmail.com> wrote:

> However would you agree with the following principle? If the cursor type
> is a thin vertical line, it should blink; if it is a huge block, it is
> redundant (annoying) to blink.

I think you won't find general agreement on that; it's a matter of
taste. I find the blinking cursor helpful, not annoying. It makes the
cursor easier to detect in a busy window.

    Juanma

bug#5564: 23.1.92; blink-cursor-mode

[Glenn Morris]

I don't see a need to keep open this particular report, which was marked
"wontfix" some time ago.

bug#5564: 23.1.92; blink-cursor-mode

[Juri Linkov]

> However would you agree with the following principle? If the cursor type
> is a thin vertical line, it should blink; if it is a huge block, it is
> redundant (annoying) to blink. I checked a few applications such as
> firefox, gedit, kate and openoffice3 and this seems to be the case

I agree that blinking cursors are annoying, but I think it's unlikely
that the default will be changed, because it seems most users expect the
cursor should blink in a graphical application.  OTOH, in most graphical
applications that have the blinking cursor, the default cursor type is
a thin vertical bar.

> although I noted that gvim has blinking block cursor with higher
> blinking frequency than emacs.

AFAICS, gvim has the block cursor only in command mode. In editing mode
it is the standard bar cursor like in other applications.  (And in
overwrite mode, the cursor is a horizontal underline hbar.)

In Emacs this would roughly correspond to the block cursor displayed
in view (read-only) mode, and the bar cursor while editing.

> So how about turn the blinking off for Emacs 23.2?

It's very easy to turn the blinking off for users who hate it.
I'd rather suggest to change the default cursor type.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/

bug#5564: 23.1.92; blink-cursor-mode

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Juri Linkov <juri@jurta.org> writes:

  > > So how about turn the blinking off for Emacs 23.2?
  > 
  > It's very easy to turn the blinking off for users who hate it.

You can make the reverse argument too.

The default should be what most users prefer.  But that's hard to measure.
(I tend to believe that most users on laptops don't really want things
blinking to burn battery power). 

The only practical way to change this is if the maintainers decide to
change it, or if a user poll shows blinking is disliked (but the last
one is hard to do, so...)